Vowell and AGNI

The two past evenings I’ve had the pleasure of, first, seeing Sarah Vowell speak at the Ford Forum at Northeastern (following, strangely, in the footsteps of prior speakers Malcom X and David Duke) and, tonight, attending the release party for the new issue of AGNI.

With regard to Vowell, whose new book is Assassination Vacation, an account of the tourist industry surrounding American presidential assassinations, there’s not too much to be said that you couldn’t read in her book. The Q&A session that followed her reading, though, presents the opportunity to enumerate some rules for questioners:

1) Never refer back to something the reader had said extemporaneously. He or she will not remember it. Early on in the evening, Vowell, a regular voice on NPR’s “This American Life,” talked about rejecting a manuscript submission because the author hyped—to a comical extent—the story in his cover letter. 45 minutes after Vowell related this, the following exchange occurred:

Questioner: “My question is about the research methods for your new book, but first I just want to say, I’m not bitter about the rejected manuscript. Haha.”

Vowell: “What?”

Q’er: “The manuscript you turned down.”

V: “Sorry, what’s your—what did I—I turned down? What?”

Q’er: “Just a joke.”

V: “Sorry, where?”

Q’er: “Ok, sorry. Moment lost. The research methods for your new book. . . .”

V: “I’m confused.”

2) Never ask about a writer’s methods, habits, or tricks. Full-time writers are just that: full-time writers. They wake up, usually shower and eat, and start to write. Then at about the same time other people’s workdays are ending, writers stop writing. Writing is as gruelling as, say, a demanding office job, just much lonelier, unless you’re lucky enough to do outside research and interviews, in which case it’s even more gruelling. The only people who have methods, habits, and tricks are people struggling to put together a work ethic. As Sarah Vowell said, all she wanted in life was to have a steady job; she writes not because it’s cool or world-changing or glamorous but because it’s the thing she’s best at and the thing she gets paid for.

And if you still need a method-fix, just remember: no one else’s methods work for you. The only way to learn how you write is for you to write, a lot. You might be banging your head against a wall but eventually you’ll find a path of least resistance.

3) If the reader stinks even a little of fame, be aware that he/she assumes (rightly) the people queueing at the mic are among the bottom tenth percentile of the audience with regard to sanity, concision, fashion sense (even if you’re well-dressed, they’ll picture you with mismatched socks), and that most important quality: having actually purchased and read the book.

4) If someone in a wheelchair is in line to ask a question, help them adjust the mic stand.

______

Tonight, though, was AGNI. I’m very fond of AGNI, a literary journal based at Boston U. and edited by a one-time professor of mine, Sven Birkerts. Sven, in light of Sarah Vowell’s advice, is a professional literary soldier. When I studied with him last year, I think he was teaching at three schools while editing AGNI. When I talked to him tonight, he spoke (complained) of having to take the train down to New York once a week this semester to teach in Manhattan. And this doesn’t include his review-, essay-, and sometimes-fiction-writing. But, bully for him, he’s landed a five-year teaching gig near home here.

Four folks read at the AGNI release party tonight, two of whom are published in the current issue. Lan Samantha Chang, announced last week as the new coordinator of the Iowa Writers Workshop, was one, as were Ben Miller and Suzanne Berne. But Gail Mazur, the third reader of the four, read best. Though she taught at Emerson while I was there, I have never heard her read—and, man, what a smooth poet’s voice she has. No one’s exactly sure where the cheesey poet voice came from (poetry slams? po-mo conventions? practicing in front of a mirror?), but Mazur was so far away from that maudlin, off-rhythym, breathy junk that part of me wanted to thank her for reading like a normal person with communicable emotions in a normal genuinely intimate tone. I suppose it takes years to develop something so artless.

AGNI 61 is another literary journal that will be reviewed in Fungible Convictions. But it will deserve some time to be digested.

Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 and is filed under lit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • Andrew

    Here’s the poem Gail Mazur read last night:

    “The Swamp Trail”

    On the sand beyond the privet hedge and the sea grass and the wild roses
    the sound of young men laughing, giddy girlish shrieking at the wet cold
    bite of the bay. August, my white desk so near the high window, labor

    and play held separate by the panes, the sea grass, the prickly hedge.
    Another summer’s ritual tasks not done, or undone, while the street’s
    gardens shifted from galas to graves—only a few leggy cosmos, and the timid,

    almost hidden, anemones. Everything else bolted, dried, clipped. But
    late summer’s dissolve isn’t my concern; no, today, it’s the swamp
    I pulled my brother from—the swamp trail, just after the War, forbidden

    forest route to school, old pin oak and red maple, my big brother’s
    waterlogged leather shoes, his mud-soaked corduroys we feared the principal
    would smell and tell on, though she never seemed to notice, so

    when we came home the proper way, on sidewalks, Mother didn’t know.
    Even then, Jonny and I were moving apart, or maybe just going silent:
    we’ve never talked about that morning. Does the swamp, the swamp trail

    ever haunt him, too—or is it only me, the thrilled collaborator,
    guilty, unpunished, heroic sneak? Did I really rescue him?
    What is the task not done? The trail—is that it? Where follow it?

    and how? Doesn’t it always end in the same place, right behind
    the lonely green Lyons playground with two boggy children,
    before they’d ever heard of sex or homework, peering unnoticed

    from behind rough trees, the dark primordial forest? We are done
    with the work of childhood, it’s over now, isn’t it, as so much else is
    finished—but still, I tell myself that Hillel says those who do not grow

    grow smaller; rebuke myself, at once teacher and underachieving pupil.
    An hour ago, I watched an ambulance outside my door, my neighbor’s
    houseguest taken ill, I saw an old man’s fresh white sneakers,

    his pale veiny legs, his faded shorts, being slid gently on a gurney
    into the truck’s hold. I’m thankful I couldn’t see a terrified face or hear
    the paramedics’ reassuring smooth proficiencies. I want to be through

    with the unanswered needs of everyone but my darling whose body’s
    been whacked by pain, by transmogrifying drugs. Have I misremembered
    that once I could save someone, and did, that—braced on a rotting log

    in no man’s land—it wasn’t hard to tug my skinny brother by the hand
    out of the muck of dead bottom leaves, the decaying flesh of skunk cabbage,
    out of the rich nutrient ooze, and back up onto our shadowy path?

  • Andrew

    Here’s the poem Gail Mazur read last night:

    “The Swamp Trail”

    On the sand beyond the privet hedge and the sea grass and the wild roses
    the sound of young men laughing, giddy girlish shrieking at the wet cold
    bite of the bay. August, my white desk so near the high window, labor

    and play held separate by the panes, the sea grass, the prickly hedge.
    Another summer’s ritual tasks not done, or undone, while the street’s
    gardens shifted from galas to graves—only a few leggy cosmos, and the timid,

    almost hidden, anemones. Everything else bolted, dried, clipped. But
    late summer’s dissolve isn’t my concern; no, today, it’s the swamp
    I pulled my brother from—the swamp trail, just after the War, forbidden

    forest route to school, old pin oak and red maple, my big brother’s
    waterlogged leather shoes, his mud-soaked corduroys we feared the principal
    would smell and tell on, though she never seemed to notice, so

    when we came home the proper way, on sidewalks, Mother didn’t know.
    Even then, Jonny and I were moving apart, or maybe just going silent:
    we’ve never talked about that morning. Does the swamp, the swamp trail

    ever haunt him, too—or is it only me, the thrilled collaborator,
    guilty, unpunished, heroic sneak? Did I really rescue him?
    What is the task not done? The trail—is that it? Where follow it?

    and how? Doesn’t it always end in the same place, right behind
    the lonely green Lyons playground with two boggy children,
    before they’d ever heard of sex or homework, peering unnoticed

    from behind rough trees, the dark primordial forest? We are done
    with the work of childhood, it’s over now, isn’t it, as so much else is
    finished—but still, I tell myself that Hillel says those who do not grow

    grow smaller; rebuke myself, at once teacher and underachieving pupil.
    An hour ago, I watched an ambulance outside my door, my neighbor’s
    houseguest taken ill, I saw an old man’s fresh white sneakers,

    his pale veiny legs, his faded shorts, being slid gently on a gurney
    into the truck’s hold. I’m thankful I couldn’t see a terrified face or hear
    the paramedics’ reassuring smooth proficiencies. I want to be through

    with the unanswered needs of everyone but my darling whose body’s
    been whacked by pain, by transmogrifying drugs. Have I misremembered
    that once I could save someone, and did, that—braced on a rotting log

    in no man’s land—it wasn’t hard to tug my skinny brother by the hand
    out of the muck of dead bottom leaves, the decaying flesh of skunk cabbage,
    out of the rich nutrient ooze, and back up onto our shadowy path?